Gay Rights and Pro-Life Groups Oppose the Republican Tax Plan for the Same Reason

TIME
by Teressa Berenson
November 06, 2017

The House GOP has angered two groups in an unexpected pairing by eliminating the adoption tax credit in their tax reform bill: advocates for same-sex families and pro-life groups.

Ed Harris, chief communications officer for Family Equality Council, says scrapping the credit will “have a disproportionate impact on same sex couples.” LGBTQ people in the United States disproportionately live in poverty, Harris notes, and often already face greater cost barriers to having children.

“By definition, unless you are a lesbian couple using a friend to provide donor sperm and doing insemination at home, then almost every other avenue costs money,” he says.

Same-sex couples are four times as likely to be raising adopted children than different sex couples, according to a report by the Williams Institute in 2013. Among couples with children under age 18 in the home, 13% of same-sex couples have an adopted child, while just 3% of opposite-sex couples do. As of four years ago, more than 16,000 same-sex couples were raising about 22,000 adopted children in the U.S.